Starchitect Project: ONS-Torlan

[Aqo]

Okay, here's the idea:

There are two teams, each team has 1-3 players.
The map contains a net of structures (if any of you player Onsalught on UT04 you'll know what I'm talking about) when every team starts with one of them in each end of the net.
The goal is to kill your enemy's original structure, but in order to do so they'll have to take control of every structure on the way there.
Structures that are not directly linken in the chain to a previous one of yours will be invinsible.
To take control of a structure, destroy the last one and move your unit inside.
Now here's where the twist comes - instead of fighting with just pressing A and selecting your foe you'll have to put spider mines, that will automatically blow up.
Each player will have two units - a vulture and a reaver, if any of them dies the other one dies too and they respawn at a random structure owned by the current team.
If a player creates a scarab it's gone and the vulture is reset (replaced with a new one) so that it'll have all 3 mines again.
One shot kills (trigger kill)
Ordinary vulture attack will do small damege that will only be useful to attack structures and reavers.
Players would be able to pick up items they see, and active them with some transport ship or a unit producting building, items will be:
* Teleport - you have a maximum of three charges of it, and picking up one gives you two charges. It creates a corsair above your vulture that will be locked to it (moved on it if it tries to fly away) and by disrupting you'll teleport your vulture to where the disrupt was, if it was on an unplaceble area it'll be canceled and you'll still lose a shot.
* Interupt - creates a number of hallicuated vultures around your original one as the number of shots you have, maximum number of shots will be five and picking up one will give you one shot.
* Deflect - makes your vulture invinsible for x seconds as the number of charges, maximum number is 3 and every pick gives you one charge.
* Weaken - creates a wraith above your vulture for two seconds every time you use it, maximum number of shots stored is 12 and every pickup will give you 5. the damege will be useful for both structures and other vultures.
* Contact - teleports you near a random enemy vulture in the range of 6*6 grids, does nothing if there is no enemy in range and whasts no shot, maximum of 10 shots stored and pickup gives you 3 shots.
* Recall - teleports your vulture near your reaver, the item will have infinite amount of charges and you won't have to pick it up.

The map will also count players score and display it like in Snipers Bald 316, every death of a vulture gives you 1 in deaths, and killing an enemy vulture is 1 in kills. dead reaver means +3 in deaths and +2 to the kills of whoever killed it.



What do you ppl think? it's original, weird, can be tought fast and still requires practising to be good at, it's trigger-intensive (whatever the meaning of this is...), it's long enought since you'll have to take control of all structures on the way to the other team while they try the same to your direction at the same time, and not too long because if one team if better than the other they'll get the structures 1 by 1 till victory, and if both teams are same good the game will be interesting and they won't care it gets long.

_____FIXED/ORDERED VERSION OF WHAT'S WRITTEN ABOVE_____

Onslaught - Torlan

-Overall information:

--Teams: 2, Red and Blue
--Players in each team: 1-3(?)
--Map type: Buildings hunt
--Goal: Destroy the enemy’s Main Structure
--Unit Control type: Single - not hero

-Description:

--The map contains two main Structures, one for each team, and five more Link-Structures that are all connected in an imaginary net.
--In order to attack a Structure it has to be linked to another structure you have.
--Attackable structures will be constantly pinged on your map.

-Gameplay:

--The basic attack will be short ranged
--You can collect items to gain new attacks and abilities that can help you to destroy enemy players, Structures, and moving to all kinds of directions.
--It’s a fast game when the main unit for every player is a speed upgraded vulture, and yet players have to remember recharging their melee ammo because that’s the main attack.
--There are no computer-controlled units. Structures that are not owned by any player will belong to computer players, but they will act like doodads and be neutral.

-Items:

--Teleport: you have a maximum of three charges of it, and picking up one gives you two charges. It creates a corsair above your vulture that will be locked to it (moved on it if it tries to fly away) and by disrupting you'll teleport your vulture to where the disruption was, if it was on an implacable area it'll be canceled and you'll still lose a shot.

--Interrupt: creates a number of hallucinated vultures around your original one as the number of shots you have, maximum number of shots will be five and picking up one will give you one shot.

--Deflect: makes your vulture invincible for x seconds as the number of charges, maximum number is 3 and every pick gives you one charge.

--Weaken: creates a wraith above your vulture for two seconds every time you use it, maximum number of shots stored is 12 and every pickup will give you 5. The damage will be useful for both structures and other vultures.

--Contact: teleports you near a random enemy vulture in the range of 6*6 grids, does nothing if there is no enemy in range and wastes no shot, maximum of 10 shots stored and pickup gives you 3 shots.

--Recall: teleports your vulture near your Reaver, the item will have infinite amount of charges and you won't have to pick it up.

--Weapon 7: Waiting for ideas.

--Weapon 8: Waiting for ideas.

--Weapon 9: Waiting for ideas.

--Weapon 10: Waiting for ideas.

[BSTRhino]

I like your idea Aqo, it looks great. Let me just summarise it so I can be clear I've got the ideas right.

Concept
Net of structures
I'm getting pictures of chains of structures that all meet in the middle when you say net of structures. The original structures would have to be a different building from the rest to determine when the game is over.


Taking over one building at a time
How do you kill buildings? With your vulture's weapon? The vultures weapon will be quite weak won't it? Is that where items come in handy?


Conflict
It appears to me that, the only time the players will get into conflict will be if they're fighting over control of the same structure or item. That would happen quite often I guess?

What's stopping the player from leaving the reaver behind in a safe place and teleporting the vulture back to it using recall when it's in danger? Is this what we want them to do? I suppose it would be quite hard even if the enemies did this, because the spider mines only possible target on the map would be the reavers anyway, and so you'd have to have very quick reactions if you were to defend your vulture by recalling this way.

How would you feel if there was a delay to the creation of the vulture/reaver, like in those sniper maps. So when you lose either one of them, you're out of the game for ten seconds before your vulture and reaver reappear.


Points
I prefer just having one scoreboard. I've played Snipers, and I think it's quite interesting how it displays both your kills and your deaths, but they're really two sides to the same coin. But it's easy enough to do either, what do you guys suggest?


Spells
They're all great ideas. I think Hotorn's idea is a bit unbalanced though. Maybe if it weren't marines but something weak and short range with low HP like Broodlings or something, or maybe something suicidal like infested terrans.

Should the player be able to cast multiple spells at the same time? For example, should they be able to have Weaken and Deflect on at the same time? This will require two different trigger timers, but that's easy enough to do, I just wonder whether you think this is acceptable.

The teleport spell is a little annoying though, we can't detect who created a disruption web if I remember right. So, either we need to rethink the spell, or make it so that whenever someone creates a disruption web somewhere, everyone in the area gets teleported to that location, and all players who have corsairs activated will have their corsairs removed after the teleportation. This could be quite good, because you could use it offensively, for example, to get an enemy vulture away from a reaver or structure.


Triggering
Taking over buildings
I would expect that all structures will belong to one of the following players: One of the human players, an inert player that just owns the structures to being with, or a rescuable player.

My idea is that, once you kill a structure, it gets recreated in the same spot, but under the ownership of a rescuable player, because it is too difficult with triggers to detect who killed a building. There will need to be a location on top of every single structure so we can detect killed buildings and recreate them in the same spot.

We need a system to detect when a building is next to a player's building so that we can check whether it should be invincible or not. If the inert computer player and the rescuable player were in the same force, we could just make a trigger for each building that just checks if the locations next to it contain a building that belongs to the neutral player force and set invincibility that way. That will create the fastest triggers but will take as many triggers as there are structures.


Recreating the vulture/reaver
Creating the vulture reaver on a random structure owned by the player might be difficult. Although considering we have a location on every possible structure, we could just keep randomly picking locations until we've got one that contains a structure owned by the player.


Items
To place the items randomly, we could perhaps place them using the existing building locations, or we could have a number of observers on junk yard dog which we use to randomly place items. The trouble with the observer thing is we need to make sure all the observers belong to a separate player, or at least a player that has units that can't move so they won't be affected when we execute the Junk Yard Dog AI script.

I would suggest making the items for a rescuable player, and like the buildings, when a player comes close to the item, they gain control of the item. We can detect this and move the charge to their stash for them to use.


Spells
The most suitable method I'm thinking of at the moment is shooting an activator unit. You'd have an activator unit for each possible spell to be cast. When the triggers detect an activator unit no longer exists at a certain place, the spell would be cast for the player.






Also, just so you know, I won't be around for the next two days very much, because we're having the graduation ceremony for the degree I finished last year, and there are all sorts of arrangements for that.

[Aqo]

I think you should add another spell:
Summon Skeleton army.
You'll create 4 marines & with trigger you'll reduce their lives per second or minute & kill em eventually,
you could use the ice effect by the Protoss Fly unit that does recall, or the dark archon's maelstrom.
It would be a good benefit :)
More spells is something must... the ones I suggested are just some basic ones but the game itself should have 10 or 11 spells in order to allow decent players always get better and use new tactics, while people who are new to the game can use the old tricks and ordinary attacks to still be helpful to their team and yet have time to learn.
My point is - it should have a process of spell ideas editing, but maybe instead of posting now you and anyone else who have ideas should grather ideas, as many as you people can, and than put em' all together and make a poll on which ones are gonna be used.

--- Keep ideas for later, and keep making ones, that line is for everyone.

Now, here's a response for the last post.

Concept
Net of structures
I should've explained better... what you understood is not what I meant.
The structures don't meet at all, they are seperate towers who has an 'energy' net between them that makes only the ones in colission with enemy ones attackeble... I'll make a graphical explenation and attach it so you can see, but it would be really simpler if you just download the UT04 demo from it's site and play Onslaught - that way you'll experience this kind of 'net' in a game (and probably get addicted to UT... but that's on a different matter)

Taking over one building at a time
I've worked of it alittle and come to this: vultures damege = 100, vultures life = 100, vultures armor = 100, so attacking a foe vulture with the vulture weapon will only do minor damege (1).
On the other hand, buildings armor = 0, so vulture attack will effect them.

Conflict
Well, yes, the idea is fighting over the control of the structures so there's where the real conflic is supposed to be.
It will happen often, since the map is only 128*128 and out little vultures have speed upgrade... you know what that means... :)

And yes, the whole idea of reaver is keeping it in a safe place to teleport - and yet, if you run away, you give your enemies time to take control of the structure - so that's part of the tactic: if you suck, choose, your life or a structure.
That's also why you'll have to relay on teamwork and even noobs that work together will be able to beat better players who only care about their personal status.

There shouldn't be a delay in respawn like in sniper maps, since unlike sniper maps when you have a rescue goal (aka flag) here you have a destrot mission and time spent on waiting for respawn goes more to getting bored than making it balanced.
What I'm trying to say is... there is still a time takes for a player to reach from one building to another, and there's no point making this time longer, it's not like he has to defend the location where he respawn and the enemy should get a chance getting there - infect, there's something I forgot to mention - you can't respawn at buildings that are under attack, so I don't think it should be a problem (under attack may be checked by 'bring to location').

Points
Well, I guess it can be discussed, but I think it's really important to show both, since a player can be good and yet die a lot, and visa versa, and sometimes team players don't like when their mates do a kamikaza, and leave them alone.
By showing both deaths and kills players know better who they play with (expecially in a game like this where you don't have much time to watch your mates and should watch yourself and the structures) and that way allow players to 'pick' their team in the bnet room more visely.

Triggers is something not too difficul, and you can easily do the triggers seperatly for each building what would save lots of trouble and won't be a problem since there are only 7 buildings in what I'm planning (ONS-Torlan) including the main ones who are simpler to make since you just need to give victory to the foe team of whoever has his destroyed.

Spells
As I said earlier, spells should be added so that we'll have about 10 of them, but they're really easy to do so we rather make a list and add the best ones in the end.

Casting multiple spells at the same time... originally I thought of... NO... but as you show it it might get interesting if they're allowed to do it... you decide.

Remember that whoever casts a teleport still has the corsair above their heads - so it can be detected.
If two player have a corsair above them, they're near and one uses it... another twist to the game... just warn them in the beggining that teleport 'sucks' everyone around it into it, it's more interesting that way.

Triggering
Taking over buildings
Yes, that's exactly what's there should be - there will always get a building there - but only its ownership changes - so whenever it's destroyed it's just recreated for a computer player.
I'm not sure how rescuble players work, tho, in multiple players game, and maybe it would be a better idea to just give ownership of and computer building automatically to any nearby human unit... it works just the same as rescubles I assume? and that way you'll have to actually stand near the building to get it.

About the invinsibility, since every building in the net I've planned has only two directions of a net go out of it we can simply create four triggers for each that check each side and what's the ownership there, two for each player and only two each because the taking-over is one-directional for every team (towards the enemy's main, and you still need a second to disable invinci).
There are only 7 buildings so it's just 28 simple triggers of 'if player brings...' then 'give/remove invisi'.

Recreating the vulture/reaver
Yup, you said it, just check if the player has no vulture/reaver and if the building is owned by his team (and not under attack) from end to current's main, so that they'll automatically respawn near the current conflict zone and yet in their own area.
It should be rendomized tho... the respawning point near builings... to not allow campers.

Items
Nah... items are much simpler.
Just create a powerup or two near every building and place a location over them, if someone touches them he gets the ammo they give and every next touch won't give him anything till he dies and respawns.
The powerups will always stay there and enemy players will still be able to pick weapons from your stock... that's how it works in real Onslaught and no one yet complained :)

Spells
Hmm... maybe instead we just make a gateway and a stargate for each player and death counters to determine the ammo? so that player can hotkey and click-choose the weapons he want but nothing will happen if he doesn't have them ;)

Ok, added a net explenation, look at it and read what's below (a game example) at the same time.

At first Red team and Blue team take control of 2 and 6, to start making their 'empire'.
Later on, Red goes to 5, while blue goes to 4.
Red send some teammates to 4 to block Blue from getting 6, while a singal teammates from Red runs to 3 and takes control of it.
Blue all retread to 3 and start getting it back, while Red take control of 4.
The map now looks like in the second attachment.
Now someone from Red sends his reavers to 1 while blue start fighting on 4.
* Notice that 5 and 3 are linked together, but they are NOT linked to 4.
Red takes 3 and Blue take 4.
Red than take 2 and blue fight for 6.
a Red guy teleports to 1 using Recall spell and starts dameging Blue's main.
While blue take the time to go back, all Red are there and game's over.
Blue lost because they only got buildings one by one, while Red took advantage of spells and the fact that the net it a double-way net (means both mains can be harmable at the same time).

[BSTRhino]

I'm going for AqoTrooper's map, I was sold as soon as I saw that little "gameplay description" AqoTrooper had at the bottom of post #11. That sounds really exciting!

I want to have an online meeting with this, let me just list the approximate timezones:
AqoTrooper +3
BSTRhino +12
East Coast American people -6

The timezones would make it pretty difficult it seems. If you all add me to your contact list (see my profile and remove the NOSPAM from my MSN email) I'll see if I can initiate a meeting when I notice we're all online. A spell-brainstorming session would be a good idea.


Gameplay
Net of structures
I understand it now! So how are we going to let the players know about the energy connections between the structures? We could have units patrolling between the structures.

Conflict
Originally I was under the impression that they'd be over 40 structures on the map, so that's why I was worrying. Seven is a good number, and it'll make the game more fast paced and the triggers a lot easier too.

Points
Okay, I see what you mean, because if you had just a single leader board, the "points" score would be a bit abstract, so it's easier to read information from two alternating leaderboards.


Triggering
Taking over Buildings
Yeah, I'll leave it up to the triggester to decide how they want to distribute buildings after a building is destroyed. It might be better to use the explicit triggers to check whether a player "commands the most at" the area around the structure because I don't know whether rescuing will give the structure to a computer player if for example, the computer-owned items are close by.

Items
I understand why you're designing the map so that the powerup locations are fixed. It's about that "knowledge of the map and its tricks" thing isn't it? That's a good theme to keep close to. If we arrange the powerups on the map so that they're fixed and can only be picked up once in each life, we'll need to be able to detect whether a player has already picked up a particular powerup.

There is a simple way to do this, and possibly a more complicated way. The simple way would be, when the player goes to a powerup's location:
Check to see whether they've reached their ammo limit for a particular item
If they have, they don't get anything from the powerup.
If they haven't reached their ammo limit for the spell, their ammo for the particular spell increases.
The trouble with this is, the players would just have to visit each of the powerup types and would max-out their ammo for that spell whenever they visited. They would also be able to refill their ammo in the same life -- they wouldn't have to die to reuse a powerup location.

If we wanted to use more complicated checking, we would have to have a way of remembering whether the player has picked up a powerup at a particular location already. I don't think we would have enough death counters for this. So, we could have switches for each of the six players to mark each powerup location, or we could use a unit-memorising system.

What I mean by a unit-memorising system is, if for example, powerup one is represented by the Terran Marine, we'd just create a marine at a special location, and if the player tried to pick up powerup one again, they couldn't, because the marine at the special location would tell the system that they've already visited that powerup. For the system to work, we'd have to use different units for each powerup location.

Using switches sounds slightly easier to make this work.

[Aqo]

Read dah' originally post


Gameplay
Net of structures
No... unit patrolling would make it annoying and unclear.
My idea was having the attackable structures pinged on the minimap like in those murder games (that some players are civilians and some are dark templars).
The players don't really need to know about the net, all they should care of is where to go, so by pinging it we make it simple for them, right?

Just make an explanitive display in the beggining like in Sunken Defence 10 Way fixed by fenix-something... (ahh that was a good map...) so that players are told how to play, and allow them to re-display it by creating a unit or dropping a unit from a transport (like spells) so that if some player starts acting like a noob and asks what to do his teammates can save time by telling him to press X, Y, and read the instructions.


..."Always go to pinged locations on the map, that's where you conqure structures"...


Triggering
Taking over Buildings
Forget the part of triggering the structures, I already did that myself... it was rather easy actually.


Items
Since there will be only 15 powerups placed on the map (two near every structure and a secret one) and they'll be usebale for all players - always - no matter if the structure is their, neutral, or enemy, it shouldn't be a problem just using death counters... cplayer brings at least 1 men to X & cplayer has at most 0 deaths of Y, add 1 deaths to Y... cplayer has suffered at least one deaths of men, set deaths of Y to 0 & create vulture n' reaver at Z...
Switches will be a whast of time since you'll have to create a different trigger for every player, while with deathcounters (and for the units counted you can use all kinds of doors and traps or even buildings... as long as thye're not units its ok) you can make one global trigger that's simple and does it all.
Well... actually 56 triggers because there are 4 respawn points near every structure (to be randomized) and team Red and Blue should have seperate triggers because of structure ownership.
Not that 56 is many - I can even do it myself in 10 minutes.


I want to post the map here so that you'll (the SCTC) see what's done but I rather if it's in some coded location so that not evey guest or googlebot who enters WB can take the map and steal the idea...

[UED77]

I really like both Aqo's and IceFlare's ideas... albeit both with slight modifications, of course.
Perhaps we could branch these off and do Aqo's first, then IceFlare's?

----

For Aqo's game (we need to come up with a name), remember, our goal is to make sure the game is playable by ANY NUMBER of players from 2 to, let's say, 8, the number and placement of the towers should be variable.
A list of players and possible teams:

2 2
3 3
4 2,4
5 5
6 2,3,6
7 7
8 2,4,8

Of course, 7 or 8 players are only possible if structures can be created (or given to) player 9 (or 10 or 11 or 12), which I do not recall at this moment, and will be forced to test it unless someone else already knows the answer.

Also, there could be some mechanism which would allow an odd number of players to place themselves in uneven teams, but this would be detected, and the stronger team would be handicapped in some way, while the weaker would be assisted (either method, or both).

----

Some mechanisms for dividing the teams should be set up.
One possibility is that P1 will be the game master. He will determine the number of teams and assign players to these teams.

Another one is that a democratic election will take place to decide the number of teams, in which P1 would have the final say if there is a tie.

Perhaps the two should be combined. First, there would be an election, in which P1's vote would be weighted (worth more), and it would be decided whether P1 would have absolute rule, or all players would vote on issues from that time on.

----

The democratic process of dividing the teams will consist of each player expressing their desires (by moving a civ to colored beacons) of alliance. If a player moves a civ to their own beacon, it means they prefer to be alone. A player will be able to make as many preferences as they wish.

Then once everyone has voted, (or if someone is stalling, then P1 can manually speed up the process), then the players will vote again, but they will only have choice to vote for a player if that particular player has expressed the desire to team with the voter. This could go on for many rounds and I have not quite worked this out yet. This process is much more complicated and longer than if P1 assigned the teams, but it would be more fair. What do you think?

More ideas later.

UED77

[IceFlare]

If you want it to be a simple map, its best not to venture into P9 controlled buildings if they are going to switch alliances you know just to keep it simple =) and I agree I dint see agos idea before but now I see it and ya go ahead with his first while i tweak mine

[Aqo]

Read dah' post
I'm not sure if it's such a good idea all this beacon and making-even idea... after all, every creator today knows that he should wait till both teams have an even amount of people or everybody leave, and sometimes people want to see how good they are and play 1v2, 2v3, etc... so adding those systems would just make it more complicated and cause people who don't wanna spend time realising how it works leave.

Also, IceFlare's idea is good but... why teachers and students??? couldn't they be cops and prisoners? it would fit the SC theme more... after all it doesn't have to be 100% like the movie :\

[UED77]

Post #24 (http://www.warboards.org/showthread.php?p=179616#post179616)

Then should we make the teams fixed, according to player number?
[code]
2 players --- P1 vs P2
3 players --- P1 vs P2 vs P3 (or 2-p team vs assisted 1-p team)
4 players --- P1 & P3 vs P2 & P4
5 players --- ??? five teams? or final player could decide which one to join?
6 players --- P1 & P3 & P5 vs P2 & P4 & P6
7 players --- ??? seven teams? or final player could decide which one to join?
8 players --- P1 & P3 & P5 & P7 vs P2 & P4 & P6 & P8

As for a revised player selection (I got some sleep last night), P1 and P2 should be team captains, and P1 would decide who picks first, him or P2. Then they would pick one player to join their team, each time, alternating from P1 to P2 and back, until there are no players left ungrouped. Then some trigs would detect which faction has less players, and they would somehow be helped out (or the other team handicapped, or both).

The structures could be pre-placed for P12 and they would be recreated for the respective team captain. This allows us to have 8 human players.

More later.

UED77

[Aqo]

Read dah' post
It's funny how you make simple things really really complicated... the way to do it is rather simple, we put the two teams in two forces and you're done! yes! so simple!

We can switch player 7 (which is used now for structures) to, let's say pl12 (which is the most stable), to allow 4 people in each team instead of just 3, but I don't think anybody is going to play a 4v4... yet who knows.

[UED77]

Yeah, well, I guess I always do things a little complicated. In fact, I might have some form of Asperger's Syndrome (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asperger%27s_syndrome), although I have not been officially diagnosed with it yet.

However, the reason I opt for the team choosing technique is because it does not punish those with slower connections, the teams will not depend on the joining order. And sometimes, people wish to change forces, but a full house prevents them from doing so. I would trust the two team captains to make the decision of teams rather that it be dependent upon the joining order.

Furthermore, I strongly support P12 as the initial owner of structures, so that 8 players can be supported.

UED77

[Aqo]

However, the reason I opt for the team choosing technique is because it does not punish those with slower connections, the teams will not depend on the joining order. And sometimes, people wish to change forces, but a full house prevents them from doing so. I would trust the two team captains to make the decision of teams rather that it be dependent upon the joining order.
Ok, it makes sense, but... if we'll do it in-game it'll still depend on whoever gets to click the beacon first.
Or if we're gonna make it transpert the players into teams only when both are already set, some players always can either get afk or just be annoying and not move from the beacon - so that the game will never start.

Meh... I guess we can make it in-game teamming, why not.

Furthermore, I strongly support P12 as the initial owner of structures, so that 8 players can be supported.
Ok, I'm on it.


-------------------------------------------edit-------------------------------------------

No, we'll have to deal player 7 insetead of player 12 and only allow 3 people in each team.
Why? you can't create units for player 12 (and I assume for players 9-11 too), and the whole map is based on the fact that when a structure is destroyed it's recreated for the neutral player.

About the in-game choose teams thing, it's too long to make...
Why? 74 of the triggers in the game are 'Force x' owned and since you can't move players from force to force you'll have to copy the 74 triggers for every player and add a switch to determine for each player which 37 of the 74 to use.
Also, we'll have to use a different color for every player instead of same team color for all team, and since this kind of system will make all kinds or color combinations players might get confused of who's in their team and who isn't.

Ideas, anyone?
- How to make the in-game choose teams work after all without having to write tons of triggers?
- What should the map be named?
- Names for the Vulture, Reaver, and Structures in the game?
- More item ideas?
- 5 seems better thAn 4?

[BSTRhino]

Okay, Aqo I analysed the map during the week and here's what I came up with.

I love your terrain, seriously, not many people can make terrain like that. The triggers look good, the general structure is there so it looks like we'll just have to fill in the blanks now. I think it's quite interesting the way you coded the spider mine to just kill all enemies nearby without delay, it'd be a bit of a race to hit the spidermine button first wouldn't it?

I tried to look for tasks that we still need people to complete:
Item pickup
Spell casting
Triggers to keep the shuttles from leaving their areas.
Pinging the next building (I can't remember if that's done?)


About extra triggers for choosing forces, let's not do them unless there's an easy way.


Spells
We need to get a plan for spells so we don't clash when making them. I've made a rudimentary one here, presuming that the only Terran unit that might possible be killed in the game is the Terran Wraith. I might need to revise it though.

Teleport
Charge counter: Terran Marine
Already picked up counter: Terran Firebat
Shuttle placeholder: Gui Montag

you have a maximum of three charges of it, and picking up one gives you two charges. It creates a corsair above your vulture that will be locked to it (moved on it if it tries to fly away) and by disrupting you'll teleport your vulture to where the disrupt was, if it was on an unplaceble area it'll be canceled and you'll still lose a shot.


Interupt
Charge Counter: Terran Ghost
Already picked up counter: Terran Medic
Shuttle placeholder: Sarah Kerrigan

creates a number of hallicuated vultures around your original one as the number of shots you have, maximum number of shots will be five and picking up one will give you one shot.


Deflect
Charge Counter: Terran SCV
Already picked up counter: Terran Vulture
Shuttle placeholder: Jim Raynor (Marine)

makes your vulture invinsible for x seconds as the number of charges, maximum number is 3 and every pick gives you one charge.

Weaken
Charge Counter: Terran Siege Tank (Tank Mode)
Already picked up counter: Terran Siege Tank (Siege Mode)
Shuttle placeholder: Samir Duran

creates a wraith above your vulture for two seconds every time you use it, maximum number of shots stored is 12 and every pickup will give you 5. the damege will be useful for both structures and other vultures.

Contact
Charge Counter: Terran Goliath
Already picked up counter: Terran Valkyrie
Shuttle placeholder: Alexei Stukov

teleports you near a random enemy vulture in the range of 6*6 grids, does nothing if there is no enemy in range and whasts no shot, maximum of 10 shots stored and pickup gives you 3 shots.

Recall
Charge Counter: Terran Dropship
Already picked up counter: Terran Battlecruiser
Shuttle Placeholder: Infested Kerrigan

teleports your vulture near your reaver, the item will have infinite amount of charges and you won't have to pick it up.

[Aqo]

I love your terrain, seriously, not many people can make terrain like that.
Thanks ^^

...I think it's quite interesting the way you coded the spider mine to just kill all enemies nearby without delay, it'd be a bit of a race to hit the spidermine button first wouldn't it?
Yes that's the idea, but remember that players can always use teleports and other items to trick their foes and kill em'.

Spells
We need to get a plan for spells so we don't clash when making them. I've made a rudimentary one here, presuming that the only Terran unit that might possible be killed in the game is the Terran Wraith. I might need to revise it though.
hmm... actually wraiths won't be killed, they'll be invincible when they appear.
The wraith is just a tool to make vultures shoot lasers, what they can't do regularly.
I think that instead of using all the units you stated for counters you can just use the terran and zerg buildings, I even already named them acording to their use :\
Also, I think you should mainly avoid using 'men' units as counters since there're death-check triggers that relate on that and you can cause someone to respawn by picking up a weapon or all kinds of akward things like that.

Also, I think we can save the triggers and locations for making shuttles not move away
by simply using stacked protoss buildings instead, the only disadvantage with this is that there'll be a one second delay (of building the unit) when using items.
It will, on the other hand, allow hotkeys and save locations.

On a side note: Did you read the 'Designer's Notes'? I think that everyone who works on the map should specify the information they changed from the original "Game Information"-trigger-note by creating their own trigger-note that will be commented with a member name and a date, so that when someone opens the map he will already know whats going on there and won't have to spend many time reading other member's triggers, and if there's a bug you'll know where to search for it (last updates).

Lastly, can someone please delete posts 3,5,6?

[BSTRhino]

Also, I think we can save the triggers and locations for making shuttles not move away
by simply using stacked protoss buildings instead, the only disadvantage with this is that there'll be a one second delay (of building the unit) when using items.
It will, on the other hand, allow hotkeys and save locations.
Hmmm... I thought about this for a while, and I think the main advantage is the hotkeys, definitely. That's what we want. Let's do that instead. Which buildings are we going to use? The Gateway and Robotics Facility? That'll give us room for seven spells. Should we use the Starport as well? It shouldn't interfere with the Fleet Beacons that are being used as structures if we do the triggers right.

I didn't realise you named a whole lot of buildings, I should've looked in there first. You're right there too, we should use buildings instead. We wouldn't want any men counters to be disrupted.

Okay, so I see you have a ring of six locations around each building, and they look like they're for items, right? So does that mean each structure has the same set of locations items around it?

I can start triggering the spells over the weekend, I'll start with recall and contact, and I'll probe someone online to help think of names later on.

[Aqo]

Hmmm... I thought about this for a while, and I think the main advantage is the hotkeys, definitely. That's what we want. Let's do that instead. Which buildings are we going to use? The Gateway and Robotics Facility? That'll give us room for seven spells. Should we use the Starport as well? It shouldn't interfere with the Fleet Beacons that are being used as structures if we do the triggers right.
It won't interfere with the Fleet Beacons... how could it? after all, all you do is a 'bring unit to location' trigger and the locations you use are all on the corners where each player gets his 'menu'.
Infact I think we can make it just 1 menu for each team since you can just use the 'owned by player' in the condition and go on with 'current player'.
All the Protoss buildings that are required in the tech for units will be stacked for each player near his 'menu' and on the ground platform itself will be the Gateway, Starport, and Robotiqs Phacility. (:p)

Okay, so I see you have a ring of six locations around each building, and they look like they're for items, right? So does that mean each structure has the same set of locations items around it?
Four out of every six locations are used for respawn, don't confuse them with the other two.
You can differ them by:
1. their name.
2. weapon giving location are aligned to psi emmiters.
Also, each emmiter should give only 3 different weapons, and it should by symetricle so that there are the same three weapons in top left and bottom right, top and bottom, top right and bottom left, and put a weapon in the middle that won't be near any other structure...
Don't make the structures give weapon yet, just make the weapons be there have their counters and work, giving players weapons should be really easy since you'll just do a 'add x to deathcounter y' on every weapon node.

Anyway, here's an organized list for ideas (not triggering) that are needed:

1. Four more weapons.

2. Names for the structures; for example, in original Onslaught main structures are called Powercores and the ones linking them are called Powernodes.

3. Names for the Vulture and the Reaver, something... original, but simple!

[UED77]

Wow. After quite a time of neglect, let this thread live again.

However, I believe that the current direction this is (was) going in only allows for two players, because of the placement of the structures. Perhaps we can devise a geometric pattern that allows for a variable amount of players from two to six?

Other than that, I like almost every idea that Aqo and BST have produced about this map. I do believe, however, that a full remake of the map is necessary once all ideas have been established.

UED77

[Aqo]

However, I believe that the current direction this is (was) going in only allows for two players, because of the placement of the structures. Perhaps we can devise a geometric pattern that allows for a variable amount of players from two to six?
Two players? Why? After capturing the first structure in every side, you have two more structures to capture (two for each team) and 1 structure that needs to be protected, which requires 3 people in each team (6 in total).
Usually, the original Torlan gets played by 16 to 24 players at the same time, hella' lot of mess death and respawns :p
Although, a new pattern is also a possibility, I can bring 10-20 more patterns from other Onslaught games and you can make some yourself than we'll see what the most votes for.

Other than that, I like almost every idea that Aqo and BST have produced about this map. I do believe, however, that a full remake of the map is necessary once all ideas have been established.
Full remake? Maybe we'll just make several Onslaught maps and release as a pack, so that players can choose what area they like the most (like in duh' real Onslaught)? That way we can accept all kinds of patterns at the same time and make the game-type more replayable because of variety :shiftyl: :shiftyr:

[Whiteknight]

Oh, I know what Aqotrooper is talking about here.

In Unreal Tournament, there is a type of map called Onslaught. You each start out with a home "node". From this home node, there are set nodes you can expand to. You expand to them by running over a node. It takes a bit to convert the node from neutral to yours. From that node, you can expand even further out to other nodes.

If you see an opposite team's node, you can destroy it, which turns the node neutral. You can then use the step above to turn it into your own node.

Eventually you will work the node path all the way to the enemy's home node. You attack that until it is destroyed and you win.

If you die, you have a choice of whatever nodes you have to respawn at.

I believe this could work easily. Perhaps pylons set as nodes that can be destroyed. If a pylon is destroyed, it is immediately replaced with neutral, unless someone comes near enough, etc. Or else beacons.

It's a pretty fun game, anyways. Well, I just thought I'd clear that up for those who havn't played UT. I'll read this whole thread tomorrow, when it isn't 3 am.

[Aqo]

It's a pretty fun game, anyways. Well, I just thought I'd clear that up for those who havn't played UT. I'll read this whole thread tomorrow, when it isn't 3 am.
You can save time by simply download the current version of the map.
You'll see there that I made it more like in Unreal, and instead of having a pylon nearby you destroy the Node itself, and it respawns as a neutral node (althought with hyper triggers it seems like it simply changes colors ;) ).
Also, I think we should remove the delay takes to build a node, since in Starcraft there aren't open servers where people can enter a game in the middle, and people like fast games, so I think we should make the game quick and take out that part.

Anyway, you're right about the fact that I took the idea from UT04, I already tried prompting the rest of the SCTC to get the Demo to have a better idea of what Onslaught games are but I don't think anyone did... Download UT04 Demo Now! (http://www.pcgameworld.com/download.php/id/5520/folder/demos/filename/ut2004-demo3334.exe)

[Ultimo]

How are you going to distunigish the hallunciations from the real vulture, unless the fake ones are owned by computers, which would be completely useless, unless you're all the same colour, and you have a computer.

[UED77]

The solution I had in mind was to disallow the casting of other spells while the player possesses more than one Vulture. In all other cases, there is really no need to distinguish between the real and the hallucinated ones.

But thank you for your concern.

====================

Aqo, when I layed down the goals for this project in a separate thread that is now lost in the Abyss, I hoped that this map could be a game played by any number of players from two to six.
How exactly are you planning to incorporate three players into the map as it currently stands? Two on one side and one on the other? That doesn't exactly correspond to the average Starcraft player's notion of fairness. The way as the map is currently set up, it only supports two, four, or six players, who play in a team, not against each other, as I envisioned.
Now, of course, you think "Why do we have to conform to your ideas on this?", and you are perfectly right. You don't. But this is not about what I or you belive is best, but rather how the map will fare in its career. If you place limitations on the number of players, then in several cases, the gaming experience of the individuals is impaired, and the popularity and appeal of the map in their eyes decreases. We can't ask the player to adapt to the map, especially since at times that's infeasisble. Instead, it is our responsiblity to create a map that will adapt to whatever the players throw at it, and fare well in doing so. If we achieve that, our map will not be a "near miss", but a true hit. And that is exactly what we are aiming for.

I believe the structures in the map should be created on-the-fly upon map start, instead of them being preplaced. Furthermore, when a player quits, the structures would be re-placed to keep the game fair.
I have more ideas on this if you wish to hear them.

UED77

[Ultimo]

So I'm assuming using a reaver while you cast the hallunciated spell has no after-effects and not be heeded?

[Aqo]

Aqo, when I layed down the goals for this project in a separate thread that is now lost in the Abyss, I hoped that this map could be a game played by any number of players from two to six.
How exactly are you planning to incorporate three players into the map as it currently stands? Two on one side and one on the other? That doesn't exactly correspond to the average Starcraft player's notion of fairness. The way as the map is currently set up, it only supports two, four, or six players, who play in a team, not against each other, as I envisioned.
Now, of course, you think "Why do we have to conform to your ideas on this?", and you are perfectly right. You don't. But this is not about what I or you belive is best, but rather how the map will fare in its career. If you place limitations on the number of players, then in several cases, the gaming experience of the individuals is impaired, and the popularity and appeal of the map in their eyes decreases. We can't ask the player to adapt to the map, especially since at times that's infeasisble. Instead, it is our responsiblity to create a map that will adapt to whatever the players throw at it, and fare well in doing so. If we achieve that, our map will not be a "near miss", but a true hit. And that is exactly what we are aiming for.
Well, when making it the way it is I thought of Snipers Bald Lock 316 which also can be played only with 2/4/6 players (and is usually only played with 4), that spacific map remained popular for over a year.

I never thought of: "Why do we have to conform to your ideas on this?", since you're also a Starchitchet member, and you're longer in the team than me, and have a better position in the team than me, thus I believe that everything you say is superier in compare to what I say, so while I'm suggesting my own ideas as well - I still put more thought into what you say than what I think of.

Now, you're right that if we allow any player combination the map will definitly be better, and if you have any great ideas how to make it that way we'll definitly do it.
We can delay the respawn for the bigger teams, we can randomly slow them down using a burruwed unit, we can make their structures injured in percentage to the other team, we can disallow them the use of several items, tell spacificly what you want and we'll go for it.

I believe the structures in the map should be created on-the-fly upon map start, instead of them being preplaced. Furthermore, when a player quits, the structures would be re-placed to keep the game fair.
I have more ideas on this if you wish to hear them.
That's a given, stuctures will be created on-the-fly and I'm waiting to hear your other ideas.

So I'm assuming using a reaver while you cast the hallunciated spell has no after-effects and not be heeded?
What do you mean by 'after-effects'?
After the hallicuations are created, the game will just go on. Since hallicuations aren't targeted in triggers they shouldn't interfere with anything.

[Ultimo]

I'm pretty sure hallunciations can set off triggers. That's why locations can center on them. I'm not sure though, I'll need to do more extensive testing.

[Aqo]

I'm pretty sure hallunciations can set off triggers. That's why locations can center on them. I'm not sure though, I'll need to do more extensive testing.
Ok I've just checked and you're correct, hallicuations are targeted by 'Move Location' actions, but aren't detected by the 'Bring' condition.

:\

Still, we'll just do what UED77 suggested and unallow players to cast spells while they control hallicuations to not risk bugs.

[Ultimo]

Will it still work when you use a reaver to "reset" your mines and you have hallunciations?

[UED77]

In case of a Reaver-initiated reset while hallucinated Vultures are present, all Vultures owned by the said player will be removed, and only a real one will be recreated.

UED77

[UED77]

Double post.

Aqo, I drew the geometric shapes I had in mind for the number of players actually in-game.
http://www.warboards.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=1793&stc=1 http://www.warboards.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=1794&stc=1 http://www.warboards.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=1795&stc=1

http://www.warboards.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=1796&stc=1 http://www.warboards.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=1797&stc=1

Basically,
2P - 7 nodes
3P - 6 nodes
4P - 9 nodes
5P - 11 nodes
6P - 13 nodes

My suggestion is each node get "enabled" (able to be captured) when any neighboring node is captured.

This proposal is location-intensive, unfortunately. Without Starting Locs, the nodes take up 42 locs (the middle one is reused). With Starting Locs, it's 62.

I don't mind doing locs and trigs. Can we go with this method?

UED77

[Aqo]

What happened to team gaming?

[Ultimo]

I think he's never played Onslaught for UT2004.

[BSTRhino]

Yeah, there are always two teams in the game, and depending on the game, the teams will have either one player each, two players each or three players each.

Net of Structures (Nodes)
I thought hard about whether extra structures would be beneficial. I came to a contingent conclusion, I think that having the node net we have now, with seven nodes makes the game better. Having a small number of structures means there is always a constant looming threat that the enemy will be outside your door any second.

Having more players on the team with the same net of structures makes the game harder and more fast-paced, players will be more willing to be aggressive because they have the option of leaving one or two people behind to defend. They will also have to think harder about whether one, two or three units are sent out to attack, and which target should they choose, based on what they expect their opposing force to be like at the target.

Seven structures in the net sounds good to me. But, for those of you who have played Onslaught in Unreal Tournament, I would like to hear about how many players you have played with, how many structures and what combination you have found to work best for you. I'll try playing the game, but I get a bit dizzy when I play 3D games like that.

Current Map
I actually think that the map AqoTrooper has put together is only inches away from being a finished product, and if we build on that and make a version, then we can play it and go "Maybe it needs more spells" or "Maybe it needs more structures." What we need now is spells, and names for structures and spells and things, right AqoTrooper? I had a great idea about how to do the item pickup part just then.

Item Pickup
I'll just review how items are picked up in ONS-Torlan. The idea is, each structure has items around it, and they are completely fixed, they never change. For each lifetime, a player can only pick up the items from each structure once, and when they die, they lose all their items and have to go pick them up again. This is an excellent way to do it, because it forces people to go out and get stuff (no turtling) and since the items are always in the same place, you can bet people will try to get defensive over item pickup areas.

What I thought of was, we could have a special area which would register which items a player has picked up from each structure during their current life. Each structure would have its own location in this area. When a player picks up say, "deflect" from structure 3, then in this special pickup registration location, a burrowed zergling would be created to register that deflect has been picked up from structure 3. Next time the player goes along and tries to pick up deflect from structure 3, the triggers will notice that a burrowed zergling is already in the "pickup registration location" for structure 3 and not give them a new charge of deflect. Each item would have to correspond to its own zerg ground unit (normal or hero unit) for this.

The reason the zerg units would be burrowed is, we don't want the players to be able to see what each other player has picked up.

Spell Selector
What were we using as a spell selector again? Shuttles (limit 8)? Gateways/Robotics Facilities/Stargates?

Edit: That was a dumb question. I read back and I think we're using stacked Protoss buildings. Is there going to be a problem with Stargates (because of Fleet Beacons being used as nodes)? And why do I get the feeling I've already asked that question...?

[Fronter]

Hmm... Here are currently three spells I am thinking of...

Twin Helix: Basically, it fires and has units blowing up as it goes father, like a rocet launcher, but goes is a 45 degree angle, wherer two shots are created at once, and the range is Pretty Small. Exploding Wriaths for the rocket moving would work great.

Freeze: Basically, it fires straight foward, and makes the enemy vulture it touches becoming unuseable for about five seconds, not like Statis Field though, you are able to still attack them. The range is short.

Pentegram Shot: Have to where it is very rare to use, that is up to you. Make it to where a laser-like beam fires at a Pentegramic shot, five ways, have the range medium, but make it very hard to be able to use, or access, maybe having to do something special.

Sorry if any of these ideas have been used, I didn't feel like looking at every page at all the spells suggested and such.

[Aqo]

Yeah, there are always two teams in the game, and depending on the game, the teams will have either one player each, two players each or three players each.
What about having 1v2, 1v3 and 2v3 games? If we can get all player combinations to be allowed for a fair Gameplay as UED77 suggested, the map will be much more popular.

Seven structures in the net sounds good to me. But, for those of you who have played Onslaught in Unreal Tournament, I would like to hear about how many players you have played with, how many structures and what combination you have found to work best for you. I'll try playing the game, but I get a bit dizzy when I play 3D games like that.
You can always play with bots and set their skill to 'Novice' (aka n00b bots) so that you can practice the controls and get used to this type of Gameplay, than either go on the net or play with 'Godlike' bots (aka pro bots that are programmed to have awesome dodge moves and never miss a shot unless you know how to dodge really well...) and enjoy the game itself.

Anyway, personally, when I'm playing Onslaught maps in Unreal I like to have as much people as possible on the map (many n00bs to pwn :) ) so I usually get on 8v8 to 16v16 maps.
Of course that I don't care playing a 2v2 and I can do well on this kind of map as well, it's just less fun in my opinion (less n00bs to pwn :( ), that's mainly the reason why I thought of making the map smaller - to reach the enemy faster and have more time for fighting.

Although, even in 5v12 games the smaller team may win, because n00bs don't really do much so let's say 3 out of the 5 are pros and only 1 of the 12 is a pro, than the team with 5 will definitely win.

Current map n' Item Pickup
Yeah, that's about it.

Spell Selector
What were we using as a spell selector again? Shuttles (limit 8)? Gateways/Robotics Facilities/Stargates?

Edit: That was a dumb question. I read back and I think we're using stacked Protoss buildings. Is there going to be a problem with Stargates (because of Fleet Beacons being used as nodes)? And why do I get the feeling I've already asked that question...?
There's shouldn't be any problem with Fleet Beacons... all of the structures on the map have their own location over them and there are no structure counters used for anything so we can put as much Fleet Beacons we want around the map outside those locations and they won't interfere with stuff...

Twin Helix: Basically, it fires and has units blowing up as it goes father, like a rocet launcher, but goes is a 45 degree angle, wherer two shots are created at once, and the range is Pretty Small. Exploding Wriaths for the rocket moving would work great.

Freeze: Basically, it fires straight foward, and makes the enemy vulture it touches becoming unuseable for about five seconds, not like Statis Field though, you are able to still attack them. The range is short.

Pentegram Shot: Have to where it is very rare to use, that is up to you. Make it to where a laser-like beam fires at a Pentegramic shot, five ways, have the range medium, but make it very hard to be able to use, or access, maybe having to do something special.

Twin Helix: How are you planning to make it turn 45 degree?

Freeze: 5 seconds with a possibility of being attacked!?!? That's too supreme to be used against other players! a 1 second delay would work rather fine.

Pentegram Shot: Oh a super weapon :) Every traditional ONS on UT has one, hidden somewhere... unfortunatly in Torlan it was hidden up the tower in the middle of the map and since SC is 2D and you can't have terrains to overlap terrains... Anyway, I guess the problem of finding a good balanced secret spot to place this weapon may be solved, maybe two spots... but how are you planning to make it shoot to 5 ways? I can see it done with 1, 2, 4 or 8 directions, but not with 5...

[Fronter]

Alright then... Make Freeze shorter duration, I really don't care. As for the Helix Shot, I really never tried anything like it, I thought maybe one of you could find out the 45 degree angle, perhaps just downgrade to a basic twin shot, and it should still be rather short range. About the Pentegram five shots... Hmm... I never really thought to much about that :laser:

New Spell Idea:

TimedTrap: Ok, this has to be the most simple idea, but you lay some invisble object, and it is timed to go off in five seconds. Make it like a neutrul observer or something, so it can be noticed, but if you don't play attention you could die. Probably the most simple spell out there. Make it not require much charges though...

[Spdstr]

Not to be a dick or anything... But... This has already been done in WC3, that's why I havn't made one yet...

Member,
~ Spdstr

[Aqo]

Not to be a dick or anything... But... This has already been done in WC3
Really!? When? Can you post the map?

[Spdstr]

Um... no... I lost it in my restore. Maybe not Torlan, but an ONS map that actually didn't turn out that well... It doesn't translate well into RTS.

Member,
~ Spdstr

[Aqo]

Um... no... I lost it in my restore. Maybe not Torlan, but an ONS map that actually didn't turn out that well... It doesn't translate well into RTS.
Capture the Flag maps went just fine into RTS, I see no reason why Onslaught won't (unless it is a poorly made map, which in this case this hopefully won't be true).

[Sikawtic]

5 ways would be easy... you now how to grid aqo?

[Aqo]

5 ways would be easy... you now how to grid aqo?
Sure grid is easy, but wouldn't it be better if we'll simply make it a 2v3 game instead of 5 way ffa? Because with 5 people all at the same time each by himself, the game will either be too long, or become a backstabbing contest.

Also, as I think or at least hope I said, we can't allow too much different structure setups on the map because if there are too many the terrain will have to be flat to fit them all.

[UED77]

Sure grid is easy, but wouldn't it be better if we'll simply make it a 2v3 game instead of 5 way ffa? Because with 5 people all at the same time each by himself, the game will either be too long, or become a backstabbing contest.

Also, as I think or at least hope I said, we can't allow too much different structure setups on the map because if there are too many the terrain will have to be flat to fit them all.

Okay, how about.....

Putting the whole thing in an installation map. The startlocs would be in rooms, and the playing field would be a large maze of sorts. There would be many doors, and depending on the number of players and an additional randomization layer, we could open or lock certain doors to shape the playing field. The randomization layer would immensely add to the replayability value as well.

Let me just say one more thing. Especially after Spdstr said there was already a WC3 map of this, I am beginning to think not using an original idea has its inherent problems. Let's go with this anyway. For the next trigmap project, however, I would prefer a little more originality. And it's easy for me to say that, since I haven't contributed much to the idea development of this project, but I can work to change that.

UED77

[Spdstr]

An RPG would be a good project to challenge you guys ;). You should start working on storyline with your next project... Not that you have to listen to me or anything, but an RPG with good storyline and "uniqueness" would be difficult and challenge the team ;).

Member,
~ Spdstr

[MidnightGladius]

I'm not sure if you guys are still working on this, but it says you are in UED77's post, so I have some spell ideas that I think will blend pretty well with the ones AqoTrooper came up with:

Negativity Vortex (name unsure): creates a cloaked computer wraith that trails hallucination deaths and is set on junkyard dog. When it hits a structure, it makes it neutral again and disappears. If it hits another vulture, the vulture will be forced to follow the Wraith until it collides with a structure. I believe it would be possible to time the activation so that the casting vulture wouldn't be instantly caught in it.

Renumeration: randomly gives a nearby node to either one of the teams or makes it neutral. One issue is that you could rush the beginning of their net and hit their home node, but you could negate this by making sure that the base node is only vulnerable when all other nodes belong to the enemy (which is what is supposed to happen normally).

Gravitational Distortion: creates a defiler that can only move a short distance from the vulture and is invincible. When you burrow it, it has a hallucination death effect over it. Any enemy unit moving over the Distortion will begin spinning around (using the "crazy unit" trick) and become temporarily invincible. After a few seconds, it'll fade away and the vulture can move freely again. One player can only control one at a time, and you can cancel it by unburrowing the defiler.

[andy3012]

wow this seems like a great idea. I loved onslaught especially the mode that had monsters in aswell... The thing i was wandering though is how you plan to do new spells unless this is a mod rather than a map...

[Spdstr]

wow this seems like a great idea. I loved onslaught especially the mode that had monsters in aswell... The thing i was wandering though is how you plan to do new spells unless this is a mod rather than a map...

Beacons, build unit, set off spell... That kind of stuff ;).

You only need to mod it if you want a unit to do something special and then it would do it...

Member,
~ Spdstr

[Sikawtic]

An RPG would be a good project to challenge you guys ;). You should start working on storyline with your next project... Not that you have to listen to me or anything, but an RPG with good storyline and "uniqueness" would be difficult and challenge the team ;).

Member,
~ SpdstrMe and BST had a talk about this already, he says it's all up to democracy, so you all better vote RPG.

PM me if u are in need of something for the current project(s).

[MidnightGladius]

Is this project still being worked on?

[Sikawtic]

by 5 ways i meant the spell ;)

[MidnightGladius]

Okay, fine, continue to ignore me :P

I'm just saying that if this is still in progress, I think I can be of some help (ideas and the such; waiting for submittions to open up).